If you live on an upper floor at Watergate at Landmark, you have watched the parcel across Duke Street change identity three times in five years. It was a dead mall. Then it was a demolition site. Then, for a long stretch, it was 52 acres of graded dirt with survey stakes and stormwater inlets. In 2026 it finally became something you can name.
The shorthand that used to work, "the old Landmark Mall," does not describe what you are looking at anymore. Two separate projects are now going vertical on the same site, on two different timelines, with two different sets of cranes. Residents keep asking which is which. Here is the honest answer.
Two projects, one skyline
The 52-acre site, now branded WestEnd Alexandria, is a single master plan but not a single construction job. Inova is building its new hospital campus on roughly a quarter of the land. Foulger Pratt, in partnership with Silverstein Properties and Howard Hughes Communities, is building everything else: residential, retail, parks, and a future transit hub. The two teams share a fence line and a groundbreaking narrative, but the buildings, the schedules, and the milestones are separate.
| What you see | Who is building it | Current status | Target opening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two seven-story hospital towers, southern portion of site | Inova Health System | Topped out April 2026 | Late 2028 |
| The Aspect buildings, 5801 Duke Street | Foulger Pratt with Silverstein and Howard Hughes | Broke ground March 2026 | Late 2027 to early 2028 |
| Roadwork, sidewalks, utility trenching around the perimeter | City of Alexandria and developer | Active | Ongoing |
If you spot signed steel and a full structural frame on the south side of the parcel, that is the hospital. If you see fresh foundation work and vertical framing closer to Duke Street, that is Aspect.
What topped out in April
On a Monday in April 2026, Inova executives and elected officials signed the final steel beam on the new Inova Alexandria Hospital and set it into the structure permanently. A matching ceremony ran the same day at the Franconia-Springfield campus, which Inova is building simultaneously and describes as a companion facility rather than a duplicate. Dr. J. Stephen Jones, Inova's president and CEO, told The Zebra the two campuses deliver "identical care," a framing that matters if you are trying to understand why the Alexandria hospital is not simply a larger rebuild of the current Seminary Road facility.
The Alexandria building is 1.1 million square feet, a roughly $2 billion project, and is targeting a late-2028 opening. It will house the Inova Schar Cancer Institute with full radiation and infusion services, a medical office building for around 50 specialty physicians, and will pursue Level II trauma designation. If Inova secures that designation, this would be one of only three Level II trauma centers in Northern Virginia. From a resident standpoint, the practical read is that the closest emergency room to Watergate at Landmark is being rebuilt as a higher-acuity facility, not a like-for-like replacement.
The land underneath is unusual. The Industrial Development Authority of the City of Alexandria owns it and leases it to Inova for 95 years at one dollar per year. That is how the deal penciled.
What broke ground in March
The residential story is younger. On March 19, 2026, Foulger Pratt announced that construction had started on the first two mixed-use buildings, called Aspect, at 5801 Duke Street. They occupy Blocks E and G on the site plan and will be connected by a sky bridge. Together they are seven stories, 390 apartments, and about 66,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. Financing came through Atlantic Union Bank with Truist Bank serving as administrative agent, a detail worth noting only because plenty of comparable Northern Virginia projects have stalled at exactly this step in the last two years.
The first retail tenant is already signed. Tierra Encantada, a Spanish-immersion preschool operator, has committed to roughly 16,000 square feet inside one of the Aspect buildings. That is the first named business you will be able to walk to from Watergate at Landmark without crossing Duke Street to reach the old strip retail.
For four years the phrase "across the street" meant a fenced construction zone with no address and no tenants. Starting late 2027, it will mean a preschool, a lobby, and a sidewalk you can actually use.
Aspect is targeted for delivery in late 2027, with move-ins realistically running into early 2028. That timeline lands within a few months of the hospital opening, which is not an accident. The master plan sequenced them to arrive together so the retail has customers and the hospital has neighbors.
The retail question residents keep asking
The full WestEnd buildout, over its remaining phases, is planned for more than 2,500 residential units, roughly 300,000 square feet of retail, four acres of parks and open space, and a transit hub the city is calling the West Alexandria Transit Center. Alexandria is also considering relocating one of its fire stations onto the site.
That retail number is the one to hold onto. For scale, the ground floor of Aspect alone, at 66,000 square feet, is bigger than most single-anchor grocery footprints. The remaining 234,000 square feet arrives in later phases across the site. What that actually buys, based on the master plan documents the city has approved, is a mix of neighborhood service retail, food and beverage, and larger format tenants along the internal streets.
Here is what to compare it against:
- The West End Farmers' Market, held Sundays 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., remains the closest walkable food-shopping option for many Watergate residents.
- Umiya Sushi opened in the West End in August 2025, part of a slow but real uptick in sit-down dining on this side of I-395.
- Paris Baguette at 4616 Kenmore Avenue is the closest new bakery-café.
- Clyde's at Mark Center, open since 1998, has been the default West End sit-down anchor for a generation.
None of those go away when WestEnd fills in. What changes is that residents currently choosing between Mark Center and driving into Old Town will have a third option that is a five-minute walk.
What to watch through the rest of 2026
The visible milestones for the balance of the year are mostly infrastructure and vertical progress rather than ribbon cuttings. Duke Street and Van Dorn Street ramp work has been staged around the site for the last several construction seasons, and residents should expect continued lane shifts as the internal street grid is tied into the public network. The city's Landmark/Van Dorn planning page tracks approved development submissions block by block, and it is the most reliable public record of what is coming next.
Two things are worth setting a mental bookmark for. The first is the exterior facade progression on the hospital, which typically follows a top-out ceremony by six to nine months and is what will finally give the building a finished silhouette from Duke Street. The second is the arrival of Aspect's construction crane, which will be your first cue that vertical residential is actually leaving the ground on the northern half of the site.
For a decade, the view from Watergate at Landmark's upper floors has included a piece of Alexandria that was either shrinking or waiting. In 2026, for the first time, it is a piece that is being drawn.
If you have questions about how the WestEnd timeline reads from inside the community, or you are curious what any of it means for your specific stack and exposure, Paul Gonzalez is happy to walk through it with you. Let's connect.
